If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Ostend-Cologne progress (mainly Belgium, Europe)

Hi,

being the creator of the huge route of Ostend-Cologne from which you can download the bèta version here: www.belgian-tsm.be , I present you a few screenshots of the newest modern stations of Leuven and Liège, every region is in its own language so it's even a little bit educational geographically.
But as you can expect from a bèta version, there is not much scenery yet except in a few rare places, sometimes polluted by repaired unfinished terrain.

The route makes itself unique because of its national size (well, nothing compared to the US but...shut up) and connections to every neighbouring country: France (Lille), Holland (Roosendaal, Maastricht & Breda), Germany (Aachen, Cologne) and Luxembourg (it's capital: Luxembourg or Letzebuerg).
Also it is as modern as can be: the station of Ghent is slightly ahead of its time.

The total size is approximatly 3000kms and as you can see it will take quite a while still before all will be finished.
And don't worry: the route is over 11GB large on the site, but when the next update comes it will "only" be 2GB large! That is due to the deletion of surplus tiles.

Doing some more research into this route, looking for a way to adjust it's visible from the tracks terrain which is too low toward the Eastern part of it, I find that apart from it's Quad Tree being spread over 4 regions in the RGE, making working on it more involved, it also has tracks and associated with it's objects placed at altitudes ranging from 3 meters to 400.

I can see no easy way to lift the too low terrain up to these varying height levels of the tracks other than manually with F9-Stamp limited size rectangles in the Route Editor and increase their terrain height. A global terrain height adjustment is not possible because of these variations.

Have asked a friend whether is would be possible to create 1, 2 and 3 km long straights, at the moment using the longest 500 meters ones to adjust the terrain, which can be given a F4 sloping gradient if necessary.

Either way it will take a very long time to do this in a route with 3000 km of tracks !

Starting a new activity at Ostende, the scenery there showing promise, but shortly afterward on the way to Cologne the scenery is bare and tracks start to incline.

Below are some examples.

There is also the WE-11 Acleantrack1.ace with it's adjusted by me Alpha-Channel to widen their track beds and re-mipped to reduce Moire, reducing it's size by half !

Here are some special road sections that can shape a large amount of terrain with one "Y". These can do 512x512, 1024x1024, and 2048x2048 at a time. Does require insertion of additional entries to the Standardized Global tsection.dat. Not for use with the default tsection.dat. The zip contains instructions and all the necessary files for those sizes. They are experimental because no extensive testing has been done, but they work for me. Available to anyone who wants to try them.

Chuck R.

Edit: For those considering a download of a zip here, check further in the thread to find and use the latest.

Here are some special road sections that can shape a large amount of terrain with one "Y". These can do 512x512, 1024x1024, and 2048x2048 at a time. Does require insertion of additional entries to the Standardized Global tsection.dat. Not for use with the default tsection.dat. The zip contains instructions and all the necessary files for those sizes. They are experimental because no extensive testing has been done, but they work for me. Available to anyone who wants to try them.

Thanks, Chuck !

Am going to test them.

Much better than having to rotate a long track section to cover the same area and can also be F4 tilted to suit the gradient of the tracks.

Having used additional test track sections in the past, I gave them temporary entries in the standardized Tsection.dat, using numbers not used by others so that they are visible in the selections list and can have the terrain under them Y adjusted.

New matching tracks length and radius sections objects for placing under tracks where they are close together at various elevations have been created by my friend Norbert Rieger, just the job for what the OS-KLN needs in various locations like this one:

Couldn't you just the width in the terrain embankment window (or whatever it's called) to the max (it's like 50 meters) and set the emankment to 2 degrees, and then select the track pieces and hit "y", or if there are already interactives, use those settings for the process you are using.

Sorry about the problem with TerrainShapersExp2.zip. I didn't finish correctly the renamimg I did. The .s and .sd files with an "F" in them should have the "F" removed. It has been corrected in TerrainShapersExp3.zip.